This podcast covers the details revealed at SolidWorks World 2010 about the SolidWorks PLM tool called SolidWorks PDS. After spending some time looking through the notes and screenshots, more details have emerged. Topics covered:

With the introduction of Internet-hosted (SaaS) SolidWorks on day 1 of SolidWorks World 2010 and the mention of more products to be introduced under the "SolidWorks PLM" brand, SolidWorks PDS was one whose debut will be in this year. As mentioned in my blog post, "SolidWorks PDS aims to address a group of users that fall into the category "Version-management challenged", which in my approximation would be about 70% or more of the user base." PDS will enable users to share, collaborate and version manage their 3D data in a centralized location without the need for complex IT infrastructure.

Although this is not a replacement for a full featured PDM system, PDS does bring automatic version control, commenting and some collaborative aspects that could be used by any SolidWorks user. Remote sharing and collaboration are something lacking in the current PDM solutions offered by SolidWorks so maybe PDS could become the collaborative branch of SolidWorks PDM packages down the road. Guess we will have to wait and see! ~Lou